color the cow

Maybe it doesn’t matter
If you do right.
Perchance, it’s just
A believe-right thing.
Maybe it’s a mood ring
‘Round the soul:
Purplish, greenish,
Of ever-shifting hue—
Such that you’re left
To guess it’s, eh, a border on blue.
You know better than you,
But true knows to the letter.
Perhaps what takes you near to whole
Is a glance on anything
That makes you smile,
A chance at comfort,
Keeps you tight against
The sweat of effort,
Even though you’ve found it
And don’t know it:
To believe you can overcome,
To trust you’re more countless
Than the sum
Of your misalignments.
Dark days, yes—
Oh, they will come!
Biting, blood-letting at the eye-tooth;
And you will slake with them on your
Over-simplified consignments,
Your overly prismatic projection of the truth—
While starving on the scratching rakes,
The leafless takes
From your random garden.
You’ll sleuth what was already known:
You were grown even as you
Fell to the ignorance
Of your youth.
You don’t add water to love
And, suddenly, it is;
You lay down years of tears—
And, maybe, possibly never,
It will fizz and effervesce
Into what was all along meant
Of that first kiss.
In this, hope will hope
That tomorrow will’ve went
The way paved in pain
By yesterday.
But maybe it won’t.
Maybe it shouldn’t.
To give up now, I say don’t.
Shall we color the cow?
To confuse black-on-white, I wouldn’t.